Virginia's First Green Cemetery - WVTF
Mar 31, 2019That’s one factor feeding a growing trend toward cremation and natural burials. Sandy Hausman reports Duck Run Natural Cemetery is about six miles southeast of Harrisonburg, on a farm road suitably named Windswept Lane. When this 113-acre site came up for sale, Kenny Kyger had an idea. His family owned funeral homes, and some customers were unhappy with the usual products on offer. “They didn’t want vaults," says Glenn Jennelle, the cemetery's manager. "They didn’t want caskets. They didn’t want headstones. They just wanted plain, simple back to nature.” In 2011, he and Kyger began clearing the land, enlarging a pond for catch and release fishing, building a shelter and a bridge over the creek known as Duck Run. It was 25 years since the land was grazed by dairy cows, and Jennelle’s crew couldn’t use chemicals to kill weeds. Over a two-year period they worked with hand tools to manicure the land – complying with guidelines issued by the Green Burial Council. Today the property is covered by grass, wildflowers and trees native to the Shenandoah Valley. “From where we’re standing now you can actually see the Blue Ridge Mountains," says Jennelle. "The Massanutten Mountains, the Allegheny Mountains -- t’s absolutely beautiful.” People buried here arrive in bio-degradable wooden caskets or wrapped in a simple cloth shroud. “I’d say 75-80% of people we have interred here are in body shrouds,” he adds. Bodies are embalmed with natural fluids or not at all, and the caskets contain no metal. That’s important because each year the United States buries enough steel to build the Golden Gate Bridge and puts 827,000 gallons of toxic embalming chemicals in the ground. Other burial grounds like the Eco-Eternity Memorial Forest near Williamsburg will only accept cremated remains – an increasingly popular choice in this country. In 1975 only six percent of America’s dead were cremated. Today...
